American Journal of Emergency Medicine 35 (2017) 842–845

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American Journal of Emergency Medicine

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ajem

Original Contribution

Fluid resuscitation of trauma patients: How much fluid is enough to

determine the patient's response?
Yasuaki Mizushima ⁎, Shota Nakao, Koji Idoguchi, Tetsuya Matsuoka
Senshu Trauma and Critical Medical Center, Rinku General Center, Osaka, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:
Received 28 November 2016
Received in revised form 18 January 2017
Accepted 20 January 2017

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction 2. Methods

The topic of damage control resuscitation has become increasingly
popular during the last several years [1-4]. This topic involves several
key concepts that include permissive hypotension (restrictive fluid
resuscitation), which is a strategy that restricts fluid use before any
bleeding is controlled to avoid excessive blood loss. However, the re-
lated studies have mainly evaluated patients with penetrating injury
and in the pre-hospital setting. Therefore, it is unclear whether this
approach provides benefits in cases of blunt trauma or in-hospital
setting. In addition, patients with hypotension should be rapidly stabi-
lized with a moderate fluid infusion to maintain tissue perfusion. There-
fore, the American College of Surgeon's Advanced Trauma Life Support
training program emphasizes a “balanced” approach to ensure ade-
quate tissue perfusion and minimize the risk of re-bleeding by avoiding
inadequate or excessive fluid administration [5].
The Advanced Trauma Life Support and Japan Advanced Trauma
Evaluation and Care guidelines both recommend an initial rapid infu-
sion of fluid (1− 2 L) as a diagnostic procedure for patients who have
experienced trauma or hemorrhage [5,6]. However, the appropriate vol-
ume of fluid infusion has not been clearly defined, despite the patient's
responses to the initial fluid resuscitation being critical to selecting an
appropriate therapeutic strategy. Therefore, this study aimed to deter-
mine the optimal volume of fluid infusion during the initial resuscita-
tion of patients who had experienced trauma and hypotension.
⁎ Corresponding author at: Senshu Trauma and Critical Care Medical Center, Rinku
General Medical Center, 2-23 Rinku Orai-Kita, Izumisano, Osaka 598-8577, Japan.
E-mail addresses: y-mizushima@rgmc.izumisano.osaka.jp (Y. Mizushima),
s-nakao@rgmc.izumisano.osaka.jp (S. Nakao), k-idoguchi@rgmc.izumisano.osaka.jp
(K. Idoguchi), t-matsuoka@rgmc.izumisano.osaka.jp (T. Matsuoka).
This prospective descriptive 3-year study (2008–2011) evaluated ≥
16-year-old patients with blunt trauma and a systolic blood pressure
(SBP) of ≤90 mm Hg at admission. We excluded patients who had re-
ceived any fluids before the admission, such as patients who had been
transferred from other hospitals. The standard trauma resuscitation
protocols were used for all other components of care. The patients' he-
modynamic parameters were recorded after 1 L and 2 L of fluid resusci-
tation. Institutional review board (Rinku General Medical Center)
approved the study. Non-response (hemodynamic instability) was de-
fined as sustained hypotension (SBP of ≤ 90 mm Hg) or prolonged
tachycardia (heart rate [HR] of N 120 bpm) after 1 L and 2 L of fluid re-
suscitation. All uses of surgery or interventional radiology to control
hemorrhage were reviewed and reevaluated. We also evaluated the
abilities of non-response and SBP after 1 L and 2 L of fluid resuscitation
to predict the requirement for an immediate intervention using receiver
operating characteristic curve analysis. All data were presented as
mean ± standard deviation.
3. Results
We enrolled 69 patients, who had an average age of 50.3 ±
20.7 years and an average injury severity score of 29.9 ± 13.9. Thirty-
nine patients required an intervention, and 30 patients did not require
an intervention for control hemorrhage. The sites of hemorrhage for
the cases that required an intervention were pleural hemorrhage
(n = 3), peritoneal hemorrhage (n = 12), retroperitoneal hemorrhage
(n = 19), and other sites (n = 6). The overall mortality rate was 23.2%.
Thirteen patients in the IV groups died because of hemorrhagic shock.
The sites of hemorrhage in these patients were the pleura (n = 3), peri-
toneum (n = 4), and retroperitoneum (n = 6). All sources of bleeding

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2017.01.038
0735-6757/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 Y. Mizushima et al. / American Journal of Emergency Medicine 35 (2017) 842–845
Table 1
Characteristics of the study patients.
IV groups No IV groups
No. of patients 40 29
Age (y) 47.1 ± 21.3 54.6 ± 19.4
Initial SBP (mmHg) 69.1 ± 15.0 73.1 ± 14.6
ISS 34.3 ± 14.1 24.4 ± 11.8
RTS 5.23 ± 1.68 5.32 ± 1.91
TRISS 0.61 ± 0.35 0.66 ± 0.37
Mortality 13 (32.5%) 3 (10.3%)
IV, intervention; SBP, systolic blood pressure; ISS, Injury Severity Score; RTS, Revised Trau-
ma Score.
were confirmed by surgical intervention. However, three patients died
in the no IV groups because of severe brain damage. The overall mortal-
ity rate was 23.2%. The group that required an intervention exhibited a
non-significantly higher injury severity score, compared to the group
that did not require an intervention (Table 1).
Among the 69 patients, 27 patients remained hemodynamically
unstable after 1 L of fluid resuscitation, and 23 of these patients re-
quired an immediate intervention. After 1 L of resuscitation, the in-
tervention group exhibited a higher frequency of tachycardia with
a depressed SBP (Figs. 1, 2). The average fluid rate for the 1-L resus-
citation was 64 ± 28 mL/min. Forty-two patients were hemodynam-
ically stable after 1 L of fluid resuscitation, 17 of these patients
required an intervention for bleeding, and 25 of these patients did
not require an intervention. Non-response after 1 L of fluid resuscita-
tion provided a positive predictive value of 86.3% for predicting in-
tervention, and a negative predictive value of 59.5% for predicting
no intervention.
Fifty-eight patients received 2 L of fluid resuscitation, 20 of these pa-
tients remained hemodynamically unstable, and 16 of these patients re-
quired an intervention. Some patients responded to the 2 L of fluid and
intervention with a restored SBP and decreased HR (Fig. 3). The average
fluid rate for the 2-L resuscitation was 62.0 ± 29.0 mL/min. Non-re-
sponse after 2 L of fluid resuscitation provided a predictive value of
80.0% for predicting intervention, which was lower than the positive
predictive value of non-response after 1 L of fluid resuscitation. Thirty-
eight patients were hemodynamically stable after 2 L of fluid resuscita-
tion, 16 of these patients required an intervention for bleeding, and 20
of these patients did not require an intervention. The negative predic-
tive value was 52.6% for predicting no intervention, and this value was
also lower than the value for 1 L of fluid resuscitation.
Fig. 1. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) at admission. Closed circles:
patients who required immediate interventions for bleeding. Open circles: patients who
required no interventions.
843
p
0.52
0.93
0.53
0.27
0.28
b 0.01
Fig. 2. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) after 1-L fluid resuscitation. The
average fluid rate was 64 mL/min. Non-response to resuscitation was defined as
sustained hypotension (SBP of b90 mm Hg) or prolonged tachycardia (HR of
N120 bpm). Non-response after 1-L fluid resuscitation had a positive predictive value of
86.3% for intervention and a negative predicting value of 59.5% for no intervention.
The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves for SBP
were 0.61 (at admission), 0.72 (after 1 L of fluid resuscitation), and 0.68
(after 2 L of fluid resuscitation) (Fig. 4).
4. Discussion
The basic principles of trauma management are to stop bleeding and
replace the lost volume. Thus, fluid resuscitation can be used to assess
the patient's response and provide evidence of adequate end-organ per-
fusion and oxygenation. In this context, the patient's response is ob-
served during the initial fluid administration, and further therapeutic
and diagnostic decisions are based on this response [5,6]. There are
three generally accepted types of response to fluid resuscitation (rapid
response, transient response, and non-response), and non-responders
do no exhibit hemodynamic improvement after fluid administration,
because of their ongoing hemorrhage. Therefore, non-response to crys-
talloid and blood administration indicates the need for an immediate
and definitive intervention (instead of simple volume replacement) to
control the hemorrhage and delays in implementing definitive manage-
ment can be lethal.
An increasing body of evidence has recently revealed that intrave-
nous fluid administration does not improve survival in cases of trauma,
and may actually be harmful in certain cases [1,2]. This is because fluid
resuscitation and the avoidance of blood pressure elevation can
Fig. 3. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) after 2-L fluid resuscitation. The
average fluid rate was 61 mL/min. Non-response after 2-L fluid resuscitation had a
predictive value of 80.0% for intervention and a negative predicting value of 52.6% for no
intervention.
844 Y. Mizushima et al. / American Journal of Emergency Medicine 35 (2017) 842–845
Fig. 4. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve for systolic blood pressure (SBP) after 1-L and 2-L fluid resuscitation to predict intervention. The area under the ROC curve was 0.72
after 1-L fluid resuscitation, and the area under the ROC curve was 0.68 after 2-L fluid resuscitation.
potentially displace established clots and cause hemorrhage recurrence.
Thus, there is a strong argument that excessive fluid administration may
aggravate any organ failure, and that additional fluid should not be ad-
ministered except to correct hypotension. Nevertheless, most studies of
restricted fluid resuscitation evaluated cases with penetrating injuries,
and it is easy to identify the site(s) of bleeding in these cases [4,8].
Thus, it may be more difficult to identify cases of blunt trauma that re-
quire surgical interventions based on vital signs at admission, and the
patient's response to fluid resuscitation is critical to determining the
subsequent therapy. Moreover, in the present study, 30 of the 69 pa-
tients (43%) who had experienced trauma and hypotension did not re-
quire any interventions for bleeding.
Few reports have described the initial fluid resuscitation volume and
rate, although one study used propensity analysis to control for group
differences and concluded that N500 mL of fluid corrected hypotension
and improved the mortality rate among patients with pre-hospital hy-
potension [3]. Thus, most studies of restricted fluid strategies have
been performed in the pre-hospital setting. Furthermore, Schreiber et
al. performed a randomized study of controlled resuscitation (mean
crystalloid volume: 1 L) and standard resuscitation (mean crystalloid
volume: 2 L), which revealed that the controlled resuscitation strategy
was feasible and safe among hypotensive trauma patients in the pre-
hospital and in-hospital settings [7]. These findings indicate that a mod-
erate resuscitation volume may be appropriate for these patients in the
pre-hospital and in-hospital settings.
Ley et al. have also demonstrated that ≥1.5 L of emergency crystal-
loid fluid resuscitation was an independent risk factor for mortality
among elderly and non-elderly patients who had experienced trauma
[9], which indicates that an emergency intervention or a rapid intensive
care unit admission should be considered if ≥1.5 L of fluid is required to
maintain adequate blood pressure [9]. Moreover, Hagiwara et al. have
reported that a shock index of ≥1 after 1 L of resuscitation was assigned
to patients who required a blood transfusion or intervention for active
bleeding [10]. Thus, low-volume fluid resuscitation appears to have
competing benefits (identification of the patient's response after blunt
trauma) and risks (reduced tissue perfusion among patients with
shock who respond to fluid). Therefore, it appears that a moderate
fluid infusion rate and volume should be considered to evaluate the
patient's response to fluid resuscitation.
Our previous study demonstrated that increasing the fluid adminis-
tration rate (to N 60 mL/min) did not produce hemodynamic stability,
and that more aggressive fluid resuscitation rates may result in exces-
sive fluid resuscitation [11]. Therefore, the present study used a moder-
ate rate that is approximately equal to the rate that is provided by a
fully-open 16-G peripheral intravenous catheter.
Our results indicate that non-response after 1 L of fluid resuscitation
provided a better ability to predict the need for intervention, compared
to non-response after 2 L of fluid resuscitation. Furthermore, the receiv-
er operating characteristic curve for SBP provided the highest value
after 1 L of fluid resuscitation (vs. at admission or after 2 L of fluid resus-
citation). Therefore, it might be more appropriate to evaluate patient re-
sponse after 1 L of fluid administration (vs. after 2 L) to assess the need
for an intervention to stop bleeding
The findings of this study are limited by the single-center design and
small sample size. Thus, large multicenter studies are needed to confirm
these preliminary results, and to evaluate the utility of 1-L fluid resusci-
tation. Nevertheless, fluid resuscitation at a moderate rate and volume
may help provide better identification of patients who require immedi-
ate interventions.
5. Conclusions
Our findings show that increasing the fluid administration vol-
ume did not provide a better ability to predict the need for interven-
tion. Moderate fluid resuscitation should be considered to determine
patients' response to the initial fluid resuscitation in trauma patients.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English lan-
guage editing.
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